33: A PRINCE OF HEAVEN

After a day and night alone in the dark, Kolya was taken to Yeh-lü. His arms pinned behind his back by horsehair rope, he was thrown to the ground.

He had no desire to face torture, and he talked fast, telling Yeh-lü what he had done, as much as he could remember. At the end of it Yeh-lü walked out of the yurt.

Sable’s face loomed over him. “You shouldn’t have done it, Kol. The Mongols know the power of information. You saw that for yourself at Bishkek. You could hardly have committed a worse crime if you’d taken a swipe at Genghis himself.”

He whispered, “Can I have some water?” He’d had nothing since being discovered.

She ignored his request. “You know there’s only going to be one verdict. I tried to plead your case. I said you were a prince, a prince of Heaven. They’ll be lenient. They don’t spill royal blood—”

He found the phlegm to spit in her face. The last time he saw her, she was laughing down at him.

They took him outside, hands still behind his back. Four burly soldiers held him down at his shoulders, his legs. Then an officer emerged from a yurt, his hands heavily gloved, carrying a ceramic cup. The cup turned out to contain molten silver. They poured it into one eye, then the other, and then one ear, and the other.

After that he could feel them pick him up, carry him, throw him into a hole lined with soft, fresh dug earth. He could not hear the hammering as they nailed down the floorboards over his head, nor could he hear his own screams.